In recent years, consumers want to perform various tasks with one intelligent device. Therefore, robots to be developed in future need to have a capability of performing various categories of tasks or a learning ability for carrying out new tasks. And, for efficient use of these robots, it is necessary to develop simple and intuitive robot teaching technologies to pass a command from a user to a robot to teach a new task or take advantage of existing tasks that the robot can perform.
A layer of performing the teaching to the robot can be divided into two layers. One is a teaching of a path layer to interpret teaching data by performing a trajectory encoding of the teaching data and the other is a teaching of a task layer to interpret the teaching data by performing a symbolic encoding of the teaching data. The path layer is mainly used in industrial robots, which interprets teaching contents as a non-linear mapping between the teaching data and a motor command to pass a command to a servo controller of a motor. The task layer is widely utilized in researches of service robots, which interprets a task that is taught by dividing it into a series of a unit act-cognition to pass a command to a host controller of the robot.
Meanwhile, an industrial robot is at a level that receives a teaching of exact location, i.e., path only, for a repetitive task. However, a service robot needs to work a task in correspondence with sensor information in a dynamic environment and thus the task of the robot is done through a command in the task layer that is abstracted more than usual. Most of the teachings to the industrial robot is made in the path layer through a robot language programming or teaching pendant being made in the path layer, but the industrial robot in a future needs to prepare to receive the teaching of the task layer so as to properly cope with various situations.
An existing industrial robot that is used in the industrial site mostly takes teaching data through a teach pendant. However, the use of the teach pendant requires off-line programming in advance and is a way of defining the task of the robot through the off-line programming and then teaching only the required position with a teach pendant.
However, in recent years, the role of the industrial robots also becomes diversified as well as the service robot and there is a need for a method for inputting teaching data that is capable of easily teaching the industrial robots in industrial site. In other words, because off-line programming experts are not resident on the industrial site, it is necessary to provide an intuitive teaching data entry method which enables omit the off-line programming.